Yang Xiadou is the Party’s number two man in Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption in the Chinese Communist Party – although some have seen this, in part, as a convenient way for Xi to bolster his power base.
Authored by Antonius Aquinas via Acting-Man.com,
Expensive Politics
Instead of a demonstration of its overwhelming military might intended to intimidate tiny North Korea and pressure China to lean on its defiant communist neighbor, President Trump and the West should try to learn a few things from China.
President Trump meets President Xi. The POTUS reportedly had a very good time in China. [PT]
The euphoria of the past month has ended with a thud and BTFDers are strangely missing as the commodity chill out of China (which overnight became full blown carnage), has unleashed a global risk-off phase ahead of today's critical CPI data, resulting in broad and sharp selling across global markets, as European stocks followed declines in Asia while bonds and gold advanced. The equity retreat, which spread to U.S. stock futures, started with last night's sharp puke in Chinese commodities.
As we highlighted (see here), China’s macro data for October 2017 was disappointing with retail sales and industrial production missing consensus estimates, fixed asset investment was in line and inflation surprised on the upside. There was some impact from state-driven efforts to reduce pollution, but this issue will be an ongoing headache for decades. In big picture terms, the challenge for the Chinese leadership is to deflate a credit bubble in an orderly fashion, something which we’re not aware has ever been done on this scale.
As we just detailed in great depth, China's credit growth is slowing at just the wrong time - as exemplified by last night's economic malaise and bond market weakness - and tonight we are starting to see it ripple through commodity and stock markets...
As we noted earlier, Chinese bonds are breaking key levels as China's credit impulse begins to weigh...
And tonight we are seeing that deleveraging pressure filter through to equity markets...
And even more so in the industrial commodities...
SO WHAT?